


Beat

by MadHatter13



Category: Ghost - Mystery Skulls (Music Video)
Genre: Communication Failure, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 19:34:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3301058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadHatter13/pseuds/MadHatter13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things didn't end when Vivi and Arthur escaped that spooky manor. But it's also not where they started.</p><p>aka, What did Lewis get up to while he was dead?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Down among the dead

_Beat_.

So alone.

So _angry_.

But alone.

It’s hard to stay consistently angry when there’s no-one around for you to be angry _at_.

He doesn’t know how much time passes, down in the cave, rage burning violet in his mind’s eye. There isn’t enough of him that is _him_ to move, to do anything much. Mostly, he thinks hard, cold thoughts of revenge and betrayal.

_how could he have done this to me I am his best friend was WAS his best friend and it’s his fault it’s that I am a Was not an Is I will burn him I will crush him I will throw him off this same cliff and see him impaled on the jagged rocks_

But as time went on, a small insistent thought kept bothering him.

_If I am a Was then who Is here, doing the thinking?_

With that thought the memories start dripping in.

* * *

 

_Beat_

Lewis should have known that Vivi would get him into trouble, _real_ trouble, from the moment she first took his hand on the playground.

‘I heard from Freddie across the street that the old house on Shag Avenue is haunted! Want to go check it out?’

                Instead he’d said, ‘Okay.’

                She had perked up like a small but energetic sun, and dragged him bodily across to the swings. (Even when they were small she was already amazingly strong for her size.) There she made the same offer to a dorky kid with a mane of yellow (not blonde, _yellow_ ) hair. It occurs to Lewis that he should feel envious, because it would have been fun to go alone with her and explore. But instead, he’s just happy at the chance to make another friend, even though the kid seems pretty nervous.

                Even as they grow up, jealousy refuses to set in.

                Maybe he just doesn’t have it in him.

                They’re having a sleep-over for the first time, all three of them, finally. Vivi is stroking Arthur’s hair while Lewis has his arm across his shoulder. Arthur isn’t crying, but only because he’s trying really hard not to.

                ‘…it’s been a year now,’ he says, tightly, like someone trying to hang on to here and now and not _then_ or _tomorrow_. ‘We went to the graveyard to see her. Uncle Lance couldn’t talk. I think he would have started to cry.’ He blinks rapidly. ‘When you’re an adult, no-one’s allowed to see you cry.’

                Lewis wants to tell him that it would be okay if it’s in front of them, even when they’re all grown up and cracked like stone in all the wrong places. But he isn’t sure it would help, so he doesn’t. Vivi exchanges a glance with him over the top of Arthur’s head, and it seems she feel as helpless.

                ‘Guess I better get used to it,’ says Arthur. There was so much bitterness is these words, Lewis thought, too much for someone not out of middle school. ‘Because when you don’t have family any more, no-one wants you. I know I have Lance, but one day he’ll be gone, just like mom. And then I’ll be alone.’

                They exchange another glance, and Lewis nods.

                Vivi socks Arthur in the arm.

                ‘Ow!’

                ‘Stop it, dummy! Family isn’t all about who’s related to you, you know! Even then, me and Lewis will be your family, right?’

                He nods again, and then they give Arthur what’s known as a good, old-fashioned _glomp_.

* * *

 

_Beat._

When he’s two months away from entering college, Arthur changes his mind. It’s not that surprising really – all he’s ever wanted was to work in Uncle Lance’s garage and fix things. (Even if he can’t fix people). Lewis goes to see him at his place, where he’s lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling.

                ‘You need to clean up in here,’ Lewis says, because there are empty chip bags on the floor and half-drunk cans of diet coke on the desk and by the xBox.

                ‘Do you think I did the right thing?’ Arthur asks.

                Lewis sits on his bed, which tilts like a see-saw. He’s always been a big guy. ‘If it makes you happy.’

                ‘That’s such a cop-out. I mean, it might make me happy _now_ , but what about when I’m older, and unemployed, and can’t get a job because I don’t have the right letters after my name?’

                Lewis wonders if he should stop him, but he’s been working himself up, and when he gets on a roll there is no stopping it.

                ‘I mean, suppose I end up a hobo somewhere in New Orleans because I didn’t bother getting one measly degree because I thought I could make it on the brains I have? Ugh, I’m such an idiot, why did I change my mind, I should have applied!’

                Lewis waits.

                ‘But what if I _do_ go to college and I work hard, and I go to all my classes, and get good grades – in fact, what if I work SO hard that I overwork myself and have a nervous breakdown and have to drop out and get so completely messed up I can’t even work and end up as the village idiot raising twenty-six hamsters in a shack somewhere out in the waste?’

                There is a dramatic silence.

‘And the hamsters, Lewis! _How am I going to feed the hamsters?’_

                Lewis leans back, his head next to his friend’s as it lands on the mattress. ‘Then you get to say, ‘Lewis, you moron, why didn’t you convince me to go to college?’’

                Arthur, who is as tense as a one of Lewis’ violin strings, goes slack. Then he groans. ‘You sure plan on sticking around, don’t you?’

                ‘Yeah,’ he admits. ‘And, I don’t know… Do you _really_ think you would be happy studying for a degree in a school you don’t like? In classes you don’t see the meaning of, for a future boss with a pointy haircut and a snotty attitude?’

                ‘I guess not.’ They lie there in silence. It’s much like their other silences, comfortably filled with things that don’t need saying, because they already know them.

                At least, he used to think so.

                ‘Of course, they never tried to make learning easy for me,’ says Arthur after a while, and Lewis can hear his crooked smile. They hadn’t, of course. A kid with a pretty bad case of dyslexia wasn’t going to find the support he needed in a town like this. Even if Arthur is a genius with anything mechanical. He’s made his own kind of math for it, Lewis knows, that makes more sense to him than what they taught him in high-school.

                ‘Might as well tell them to bugger off,’ Arthur says.

                Lewis musses his hair. ‘You’re gonna go far, kid.’

* * *

 

_Beat_.

Of course, Vivi is paying more attention than the two of them. So one night she Summons them (her words) to Arthur’s new basement apartment.

‘We need to spend more time together.’

                They look away from the screen where she is nailing both of them in SuperSmashBros - she hoots when this gives her the opportunity to win for the third time that evening. Then she puts the controller down and says, ‘We haven’t been hanging out as much.’

                They exchange another glance over the top of her head.

                ‘Well… Yeah,’ says Arthur, kinda awkwardly. ‘You and Lewis are busy with collage and internships and things, and I’ve got shifts to fill at the garage.’

                ‘But we should make time for each other,’ says Vivi. ‘I don’t want us growing apart just because we have to do,’ she shivers, ‘ _adult_ stuff now.’

                Lewis can’t help but shiver along. It’s a pretty disaster when ‘adult’ stuff has started to mean being the only one doing the dishes or thinking staying up past eleven thirty is a bit too much. Or, God forbid, _filing_ your _taxes._ On the floor next to him, the dog(?) Mystery sneezes.

                ‘Viv, we aren’t going to stop being friends or anything because we don’t see each other all the time,’ says Arthur. But Lewis can tell he isn’t as convinced by his own words as he’d like to appear.

                ‘You say that now. But I want to be bugging the crap out of you guys when we’re all cynical oldies in the same care home , crowding the living room with old video game tournaments.’ She picks up the controller again, and plays with the cord.

                It’s clearly been bothering her. And Lewis can see no downside to hanging out with his two favorite people, so he says, ‘What did you have in mind?’

                She drops the controller again and gestures wildly with one hand. ‘Glad you asked! Boys, we are reinstating Mystery Skulls!’

                ‘We are… what?’ Says Arthur, and there is a bit of resigned dread in the corner of his mouth. But it seems like the regular level of objection, so Vivi continues.

                ‘Our paranormal investigation agency, doofus!’

                ‘Uh, Vi… that was in fourth grade.’

                ‘All the more reason to get it running again! Can you imagine all the cases we have piled up? It’s not like ghosts and things are _going_ anywhere.’

                There’s no dissuading her, and anyway they don’t really want to. So weekly excursions or meetings or discussions on weird paranormal stuff become regular. And so they always have something to talk to each other about, even if they are all doing different things in their day-to-day-lives.

And they stick together. That’s the important part.

* * *

 

_Beat._

                ‘I’m gonna dye my hair blue,’ admits Vivi one time when visiting him after school on his shift at the restaurant.

                He looks up.

                ‘Only I don’t really dare,’ she admits. She eyeballs him. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me why?’

                He shakes his head. ‘It’s your hair. And I’m sure it’ll look good on you.’

                She sighs, and flops down on the table. ‘I guess I want to do something stereotypical and teenager-y. When you’re always expected to be the _good_ one, you never get to do anything impulsive.’

                Her sister left home early and moved in with a guy who calls himself a guitarist. Although he only seems to strum Wonderwall on a beat-up plank of wood barely deserving the moniker ‘guitar’ when people ask him what kind of music he plays. It was one in a series of protests against coming from a middle-income suburban small-town home, but it was the most recent and memorable in Lewis’s mind. Now, everyone likes to compliment Vivi in a weird, slanted way. _‘Oh, so hardworking and talented college-going and quiet,_ as compared to her sister _.’_

‘I’ll do it with you,’ he says.

                Her head whips up from the table. ‘You will?’

                ‘Yeah, sure. I always wanted to dye my hair.’

                She very nearly vaults the table to hug him. ‘You are the best friend ever!’

                ‘Yeah, I’m great.’ He smiles, and then they go find Arthur, because it’s easier to do with at least one person not covered in strange colors to mess the whole thing up. He rolls his eyes and calls them dorks, but he helps without complaining (his constant stream of snark is another thing entirely).

                Afterwards, he steps back and looks at them with a raised eyebrow. ‘Well, you match. Blue and pink?’

                ‘Purple,’ says Lewis, but not with much indignation. He likes the color, no matter what name people give it.

                ‘Your mom is going to be so mad,’ says Vivi. But she’s smiling, like the prospect of bringing some shock to small-town sensibilities excites her. It’s an infectious kind of feeling.

                ‘She’ll get over it,’ he says, and smiles back.

                Arthur calls them both idiots, but they help him clean up the mess they’ve made in his basement apartment. It’s become a headquarters/clubhouse/hangout for the three of them after cases and on weekends and after work. There’s even a basket for Mystery, though he shuns it and prefers one of the beanbags (specifically the one belonging to Arthur). It feels as much like home as anything else does.

* * *

 

_Beat._

They do see a lot of weird stuff. It’s almost always people taking advantage of the fact that you can get petty revenge on people just by passing around the rumor that their house is haunted. Who’d have thought the laws of stigmatized property extended to poltergeist activity?

So a bunch of times they end up reporting some asshole to the local police because they’ve been walking around the neighbor’s back yard with a sheet over their head. There’s also a hilarious incident a couple of towns over where a senior citizen got bored during their stay at a care-home and decided to walk around in a Grim Reaper costume. Though that one caused a few unfortunate heart palpitations…

                But there’s also _really_ weird stuff they can’t quite explain (one of those things being the dog and, oh god, Lewis isn’t just isn’t going there). Vivi doesn’t seem troubled by it. She’s always accepted ghosts as a fact. Arthur is just straight-up terrified-but-wisecracking.

Lewis thinks about it more than he’d like to admit. _Why_ do spirits stay, for example? Having an unfulfilled purpose seems fair enough, but _how_ do they stay anchored to what is, by all intents and purposes, an apartment where they’ve long since stopped paying their lease and were rudely kicked out by the landlord? And is it even worth it? All they seem to be doing is sticking around to levitate people’s crockery and making the bathroom walls bleed. It doesn’t seem so ideal to him.

                _(he figures out the first question soon enough – at least for his own case. If you manage to stay furious for long enough, that’s just the start of your troubles. It’s the memories feeding your emotions that make all the difference. And the remnants of other ghosts sticking around to get you somewhere safer. He isn’t sure he’ll ever be over the irony of his final answer.)_

* * *

 

_Beat._

He and Vivi start going out, and it’s a lot less awkward than he feels it should have been. It wasn’t ever even all that official, really. One day he’d just asked if they were a couple and she’d thought about it a moment, shrugged, and said yes.

                It is _nice_ , though. For one thing, he doesn’t know anyone who gives better hugs (Arthur comes to mind, but he’s usually too high-strung to take the time.) And it’s good to have someone who doesn’t seem to have consider very close friendships and romantic relationships all that differently. It could have gotten weird if either of them suddenly became cheesily affectionate. He likes taking people out to dinner, and he’s a sucker for romantic gestures. But it’s the gestures themselves rather than the circumstances that he likes, he realizes.

                He worries about Arthur, because he doesn’t want him to feel left out (God knows that Arthur knows how to close himself off in his own mind.) But their friend just raises an eyebrow and says ‘Bout time.’ Then he goes back to working on his ongoing project of recreating the automail prosthetics from Fullmetal Alchemist.

                He’s happy, and so’s Vivi – not any more or less than before they started dating, just. Happy. But something feels off all the same, like they’ve lost their balance. Because sometimes he can see her look at Arthur with this sort of serenely reverent look on her face. Like she looks at Lewis.

He _tries_ to feel jealous, right up until he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror doing the same thing.

And he doesn’t know how to bring it up, because he loves her – she’s one of his two best friends, he’s loved her for years, of course. And now it seems he also loves Arthur in a pretty similar way. Lewis has been openly bisexual for a pretty long time. (He’s known pretty much forever, but didn’t bother bringing it up with his family until his abuelita saw his new haircut and asked if he was gay). And he _knows_ Arthur isn’t straight the same way he knows he doesn’t like jam much. But Arthur doesn’t seem about to acknowledge it anytime soon. So Lewis dithers about what to do, and tries to keep everyone involved happy.

                It lasts. For a while.

* * *

 

_Beat_.

It’s an average enough day when Lewis dies.

                They’ve been planning to go on a minor road-trip for _days_ now . Vivi’s been busy at the bookshop, and Lewis at the restaurant, and Arthur at the garage, and they need some R &R or they’ll burst. It’s not even supposed to be a paranormal trip, actually. They were just going to sightsee at uninteresting landmarks and super-specialized local museums and eat at bad diners.

Then all plans of mediocrity go straight out the window when they almost run over a guy who suddenly tears up onto the highway waving his arms at them to stop.

                Arthur yanks at the breaks so hard the van leaves swirls on the asphalt, and the stranger runs right up to the passenger window and knocks until Vivi rolls it down. ‘Please! You have to help me!’ He pants, and there are scratches on his hands. ‘I was rappelling with my friend in the caves down the road and his line snapped and he fell! I need your help to save him!’

                _(later, when he’s been down in the cave so long he’s lost track of time, Lewis can remember nothing about the stranger. except how green his eyes were.)_

                ‘Of course!’ Says Lewis, about to invite the guy to the back seat. Arthur grabs his arm.

                ‘Woah, shouldn’t we call the police? And an ambulance?’

                Vivi is waving around her old flip phone and squinting at the screen over her glasses. ‘That’s weird, there’s no reception…’

                Lewis checks his own, and then shrugs. ‘We’ll have to do the best we can, and get him to a hospital on our own.’

                ‘Guys,’ Arthur says, and lowers his voice. ‘This feels weird. If the guy was climbing, where is his gear?’

                He’s right – the guy is only wearing khaki’s and a t-shirt, but he might have left his stuff at the cave, and frankly Lewis doesn’t have time for Arthur’s paranoia at a time like this.

                ‘I don’t see why we should take that chance,’ he says, and he’s never been a loud guy, but he can be commanding when he wants to.

                ‘I’m sorry, Arthur,’ says Vivi, ‘But I’m with Lewis on this one.’

                Arthur looks like he’s about to say they’ll all get murdered by the local mafia and buried in a mass-grave in someone’s back yard, but then his lips press together. ‘Take the wheel,’ he says to Lewis, and moves to the back seat.

                He’s silent for the rest of the journey.

* * *

 

_Beat_.

                They arrive at the cave. The stranger doesn’t seem to want to get in the car, but jogs ahead, even though it has to be at least half a mile of rocky road. That should have rung at least some warning bells in Lewis’ head. He’d looked absolutely exhausted when he rerouted them. But he’s too busy feeling indignant and self-righteous and worrying about the person trapped in said cave and mad at Arthur. So he dismisses those thoughts.

                They step out of the car, each grabbing a torch, the stranger ( _why did they never ask him his name?)_ exclaiming all the while. ‘Please hurry! It could be too late!’

                The further inside they go, the air seems to glow a strange green color. Fluorescence, probably, he thinks.

_(but doesn’t question why it’s not the fungi on the wall that shines, but the atmosphere itself)._

                He can see from the look of wonder on Vivi’s face that under different circumstances she would love to explore the place. Maybe they’ll come back later. Arthur’s subdued, and Lewis thinks that they’ll have to talk about this later – he does trust Arthur’s judgment. It’s got them out of several tight corners in the past. But there are some things that just take precedence, and people in peril is one of those things.

                Arthur objects when they have to split up. Even when the stranger says it’s anyone’s guess if it’s possible to reach him from above or beneath the cliff he fell off. But they settle it so that the stranger goes with the two of them ( _he insists, actually, which only seems strange later)_ and Vivi goes with Mystery below.

                Except it doesn’t quite go that way, does it? He remembers, because Arthur says, ‘Where’s that guy ran off too? Can’t see him in this gloom. Is he up ahead or something? And go _back_ , Mystery! You’re supposed to be with Vivi...’

                Lewis shines his flashlight so that he can see over the edge of the cliff. He can only just catch glimpse of the sharp rocks below.

                ‘Hey, what are you – No!’

                These are the last words he hears Arthur say…

                …Alive.

* * *

 

_Beat_.

                Pain

                So much _pain!_

                But only for a short while.

                Because there are stalactites _(stalagmites? He never got hang of the difference, but way to be distracted from your own death there, Lewis…)_ sticking through several of his major organs. His bones are probably dust from such a fall, his lungs and larynx are crushed so that he can’t even scream –

                -but then all this passes, and there is just numb shock. Because although he is still somewhat attached to his body, it doesn’t seem all that attached to _him_. He can’t _feel_ himself – he can just hear the echo of his own thoughts, but there is no _him_ for those thoughts to be taking place inside of.

                He can hear (although there is nothing for him to hear with) Vivi’s screams, her cries as she sees what’s left of him at the bottom of the cavern. And he can _see_ , without eyes, the cliff above, where he fell. And though he can’t see Arthur he knows, with blank certainty, as day follows night, that Arthur pushed him.

                It is the only thought in his non-existent or at least non-operating brain as time seems to pass at the speed of sound around him and suddenly he is all alone.

                Then,

                bright, hot, scorching _anger_.

All these things have flashed through what passes for his mind uncountable times. They do say that your life passes before your eyes before you die, but they never mention that it goes on doing so _after_. Nor that, apparently, you don’t need eyes for this to happen. Or that it’s only because there is nothing else to occupy your thoughts.

                But the more he remembers, the more _him_ he feels. And although he _needs_ the anger, it seems that even incorporeal beings are eventually tired out by such emotion.

                He takes the small, precious shards of memory, and imagines pressing them inside a locket like the one his abuelita wore around her neck after his abuelo passed.

                It’s then that he becomes aware he’s not _quite_ alone in this ghastly green cavern. There are wisps of thought, or hardly thought at all. Maybe just echoes of words. They hide from him, although not as if they’re scared. More… shy.

                He doesn’t know how to speak to them, so he tries to appear non-threatening _(which, as a good-natured but big guy he’s had to master.)_ Which is hard, because he doesn’t exactly have anything like ‘appearance’ now. At least not on any wavelength visible by humans. And they start to approach him, and although they don’t _say_ anything, there’s the indication of ‘???’ in the atmosphere. So he tells them, finding that he _does_ have a voice, although not one that can be physically heard.

                They have surprisingly little interest in how or why he died, but the more he tells them, the more they want to hear about _everything_. One night _(or day, or afternoon, or perhaps the world has ended and none of those apply anymore)_ he is short of things to tell them, so without meaning to he starts to hum a song. It was a habit of his when thinking back when he was alive – it gives a rhythm to a world that often seems to have none. And the wisps go _nuts._ They’re so excited by this invention that they beg him _(some of them can manage individual words by this point)_ to sing more.

                So he does – he has an exceptional memory for lyrics. Daft Punk, Pink Floyd, the BeeGees… they eat it up. Almost literally, actually, when they try singing themselves. He can feel them growing to become _more_ than shadows of memory. Almost as if giving them something to do, to work with, gives them a personality.

                He’d feel inclined to say something about how ridiculous the idea is, but, well, his _life_ (or _un_ life) is ridiculous as it is. So.

                He starts naming them to tell them apart and for something to do. Inky, for example, is _really_ into Styx, while Blinky prefers Bowie, and Clive strives to achieve the gut-bursting high-notes of Queen. Pinky is all about the beat. If he was anything else but an incorporeal collection of _(mostly second-hand)_ memories and mumbled choruses, Lewis would have wanted him as a drummer. But they already had a drummer after all, didn’t they? Although he was never sure how Mystery could hold the drumsticks without opposable thumbs and also because he’s a… “Dog.”

                He’s not going into that whole business just now. It breaks his nonexistent brain just thinking about it.

                Then he remembers that he isn’t, can’t be, will never be a part of a band, of _the_ band again. He becomes so angry that the wisps flee to another cavern to choreograph dance moves to ‘Hooked on a feeling.’

                But the weird thing – well, weird _er_ in a series of nothing but weirdness – is that he can also feel himself grow. One immeasurable unit of time _(although he’s come up with systems using dripping stalactites as a sort of hourglass)_ he realizes he can gradually do things such as move stuff around. First only dust-mites, then pebbles, then quite large rocks.

                And he ventures further into the cave, until he’s explored every single corner of the vast and labyrinthine rock formations. But he never goes too far towards the exit. He isn’t sure what would happen, or if anything would happen at all. Even as an incorporeal spirit he doesn’t want to risk what existence he has.

                The wisps _(he’s taken to calling them Dead Beats in his not-head)_ tell him that they were maybe like him once. They died here, and have little memory of what or who they were. They don’t know _how_ they died, either, whether it was an accident or murder. But there is something they keep trying to explain to him, and he can’t understand. Their vocabulary hasn’t synced up with actual _meaning_ , so they just keep sending him what they’re feeling. The best he can make out is ‘the smell of green’ and ‘hunger.’

                But it’s coupled with the fact that they keep urging him to go near the entrance – he suspects they even want him to leave. Which, well, is a bit hurtful. You’d think rejection would stop post-mortem.

                But they keep signaling him the same things as time goes on. They even stop mid-choir practice to urgently whisper. And he doesn’t know why, because he doesn’t feel like anything is different.

                Right up until it is.

                Almost as if out of the blue, he feels the anger rising, but it’s not _his_ anger. It’s emerald, and seething, not violet and explosive and empty, like his own, and it puts him completely off balance. In fact, it makes him feel almost offended – _oh, you think you’ve got it hard, whoever you are? Well, I’m_ dead _, so I’m pretty sure my problems trump yours._

But the feeling is oppressive and choking. It grows exponentially over what he guesses can’t be more than a couple of days, until he _has_ to leave. Or else he’ll tear the cavern apart, and bury both himself and the Dead Beats.

                He’s out the entrance before he realizes it, and then he can feel the sun, and the breeze _(even though he has nothing to feel with)_ and he has never been so _happy_ since he died.

                But he can’t stay out there in the middle of nowhere, and he tiers out faster than inside. So the Dead Beats show up and, like a litter of over-enthusiastic puppies, nudge him across the wilderness. Its slow moving, even though he should be able to move at the speed of sound just because he has no body. It frustrates him, until he thinks, ‘This _is where I need to be_.’

                And

                he

                is

                falling.

And suddenly There is Here. If he could blink, he would, because he recognizes the place. It’s the bush-and-thorn flat about ten miles from the town where he grew up, and the highway goes past not a hundred feet away. It’s one of the places teenagers go to do things their parents don’t approve of. Which, in a town like theirs largely means smoking and drinking outrageously expensive liquor they pawned of their older relatives.

But he’s too exhausted to think much further, because moving himself and the Dead Beats is harder than moving just a few pockets of empty air. So he lets himself slither beneath the nearest rock for shelter. He falls asleep to the soothing strains of Daft Punk, and the last thing he remembers thinking is ‘We’re going to need a place to stay.’

* * *

 

_Beat_.

When he wakes, there is a house, and he recognizes it.

It’s a memory – a dream of where he and Vivi and Arthur used to predict they’d live when they were older. They’d wanted to imagine a future where they were adults and probably space presidents or something well off enough to be able to afford a manor. As it came from the imagination of a bunch of kids with questionable and clashing taste, the interior is ostentatious and garish and flashier than any adult would allow.

He likes it. It’s like the home he imagined, not the one he had. And he doesn’t want to remember too much, because remembering makes him angry. He’s so sick of feeling angry by now.

* * *

 

_Beat_.

The house is about as real as he and the wisps are, meaning that it’s real enough to pretend. It’s kinda like a mass hallucination, but he’s the one having it, and convincing others that it is real.

                This is what causes him to ask: ‘If I can imagine a place for me to exist, can I imagine _me_?’

                It goes well enough the first time. But then he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and sees that he looks exactly as he did when he died; bloody wounds and broken eyes and everything. It makes him so furious that he spends days trying to twist it into something bearable. Or at least intentionally terrifying in a way that doesn’t make him sick to the stomach he doesn’t have.

                He finds something that works, and sticks with it.

                Internally, he blames Arthur for always insisting on watching that same stop-motion movie on Christmas.

Then it happens.

                The van.

                The dog.

                _Sandwiches_ , of all things.

                Him.

                Her.

                _Them._

He is so happy, not to be alone for a moment. But then the thoughts of _could have been_ and _then_ and _how could_ you and _I ~~loved~~ trusted you_ come crashing back, and he feels fury the likes of which he never has before, living or dead. _(and he never spent much time angry when he was alive)_. It’s all the worse, because given time and a self that doesn’t breathe or eat or sleep, he had nothing to do but polish those odd skills of contagious hallucination. And he has become very good at using them.

                But even through the cloud of purple haze he sees no recognition in Arthur’s eyes, which is worse than if he groveled or begged forgiveness. And even if he thinks he sees a moment of recognition on Vivi’s face, it’s gone, _they’re_ gone before anything can be done about it.

                The locket has become the real thing, somehow, in his hands, and it’s cracked much like his imaginary heart.

                They don’t remember. Or they don’t recognize him.

                That kills any reason for him to persevere.

                For the first time since his death, his illusory form changes, and he knows it is as close to how he looked alive as is possible.

                He looks, for one last time, at the memory of them, whole and before.

_Bea-_

 


	2. Living proof

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for referenced (well, forced) suicide.

Violet flames burst out of nothingness.

No!

He refuses. He refuses to leave.

His image, and that of the manor, flickers.

He will not go. _He will not go._

What was that phrase his English teacher had gasped over so often in high-school?

‘Gently into that good night.’

He promised to stick around.

For better, or for worse.

* * *

 

 

_-eat._

 

* * *

 

 

He’s been feeling like a ghost.

Overdramatic, but there it is. Arthur lies on his back on his hard, too-narrow bed, and stares at the ceiling. There, digital and slightly distorted red letters projected by the alarm-clock he made when he was twelve _(and still hasn’t needed a change of batteries)_ tells him it’s well after midnight.

They had left that creep-ass haunted house in a hurry, but not hurriedly enough for him. He never, ever wanted to see those endless halls and paintings again, floors decked in purple carpet and violet flames lighting the candles.

                Lewis had always liked purple…

                He wrenched himself away from that thought. No, he never wanted to see what lived _(if that was even the right word)_ in that place again.

                Vivi had been unusually subdued after what happened – she usually bounced right back after whatever they ran into, whether it was a poltergeist or a mopey ghost. Of course, that had been before the… Before.

                His arm – what’s left of it, at least. He never wears his prosthesis to bed – aches. Again, out of no-where, it feels like his skull will split with headache, and he keens, and curls up on the duvet in defense from the outside world. They started almost as soon as they entered that place, and they haven’t stopped since.

                He’d think they were migraines, but he’s never had one before, so he can’t be sure.

                Green light. A friendly voice in his ear:

                _Oh, you really can’t be blamed. Envy is perfectly reasonable. Happens to everyone. It’s not_ your _fault that they got together in complete disregard for you, you know._

                _But it wasn’t like that_ , he protests in vain against the dark and empty room. _At least not that simple._

In his mind, he sees only the vague image of the eerie light of the cave, and Lewis, as he falls, and the feeling of the muscles and bones in his arm being completely sheared in half.

                The people in the hospital and the police all said he must have fallen along with Lewis, and only been saved at the cost of an arm. They nodded when they said this – like it makes sense.

                It never has to him. Did it get torn off as he was hoisting himself up? That doesn’t sound like anything from Ms. Daphne’s anatomy class in freshman year.

                They tell him memory loss due to such a traumatic experience is perfectly normal. He doesn’t tell them that when he woke up, he could tell apart the dried blood around Mystery’s maw from the normal color of his fur.

                It’s when Vivi starts talking about a rock climber who lead them to the cave in the first place that he starts becoming skeptical. There’s no way he’d forget a guy like that, and anyway, they never found anyone else in the cave. If they went there to help someone, where were they?

                She says he was opposed to going from the beginning, but Lewis talked him into it. He can’t remember that either. He can just remember sitting in the back of his own car with Lewis in the driver’s seat. He hadn’t felt like third-wheeling it between his two best friends. It was them who decided to go exploring.

                Yes. That must be it.

                The voice in his memory says, _All you have to do is reach out, you know. You barely even have to nudge him_.

                He manages to make it to the bathroom before throwing up.

* * *

 

_Beat_.

‘We are _not_ going there again,’ is the first thing Arthur says to her when they meet again the next day. It is at Vivi’s workplace, and the bookshop is thankfully quiet. There’s only a single guy in a fedora and Brony t-shirt straggling in the comic section, and they’ve got peace enough to talk.

                At least from other people.

                ‘I know,’ she says. Then she frowns. ‘That means you too, you know.’

                ‘What? I thought _you’d_ be jumping to go back and have a look around, the more dangerous the better,’ he says, only a little bitterly.

                ‘Maybe I would,’ she says defiantly. Because there have been too many instances of _‘Oh, be careful,’_ and _‘Think about what could happen,’_ and _‘Don’t you see how Lewis’ family miss_ him _?’_

                ‘But you better stay away as well.’

                He makes a face. ‘What do you mean? You think _I_ want to meet the creepy skeleton ghost again?’

                ‘Yes, because you do. You had that look on your face the whole time we were driving away. You’re remembering.’

                She doesn’t say, _because we both recognized him, somehow._ She doesn’t think either of them can handle admitting it right now.

                He just snorts. ‘Yeah, right. I’ll just leave now and do something less dangerous. Like, get work as a human test subject for explosives. Or practice my chainsaw juggling.’

                They leave it at that. There is too much to think about.

* * *

 

_Beat_.

She has been sitting on the roof of her apartment building (hers being in the attic) for almost two hours now, alone.

                She always liked being in high places; sometimes, the boys would join her, but it was nice to be on her own sometimes.

                Of course, back then, it was by choice.

                Because Lewis is gone, and Arthur doesn’t like high places. Not anymore, at least.

                She didn’t cry after they got away from the manor, although that doesn’t mean much. She hasn’t cried for a long time about anything.

                But now it seems she might have a reason, or at least the inclination. Because now things are difficult and _weird_ again and she doesn’t understand!

                She hates it, not understanding.

                She thinks: ‘I knew that house, only I’ve never actually seen it before except in my head.’

                She thinks: ‘That locket _meant_ something.’

                She thinks: ‘Lewis was always pretty good at improvising.’

                Up in the sky, she can’t see as many stars as she’d prefer. A combination of cloudy weather and light-pollution can be a formidable opponent.

                She thinks…

‘That was a _lot_ of purple.’

He’s crawled into the bathroom in his apartment, and turned all the lights off. It’s cold there, but he curls up in the shower stall none the less.

                Even with the door closes, behind his eyelids he can see the green glow that’s been in the back of his brain ever since they came back.

                The not-migraine isn’t helping, either.

                Because there is nothing else for him to do, he remembers.

* * *

 

_Beat_.

                _‘You’ll go far, kid.’_

_He wants to reach out and take Lewis’ hand for comfort. Because if his friend is anything, he’s comforting, and sincere in that he won’t judge you for your choices if he thinks they won’t make you unhappy. But he doesn’t, because he remembers freshman year at gym and how the guys shoved him into a locker and called him a fag. And how Lewis made them back off and said ‘Don’t use words like that,’ and looked out for him every time he thought something might go wrong._

_Because he doesn’t want to make it weird._

_And that is hilarious, because his life is_ so _weird, weird enough for three movies and a spin-off tv-show. His best friend is obsessed with ghosts and the paranormal, and his_ other _best friend is happy to tag along. To say nothing of the… dog. And sometimes he feels like he’s just there to be the comic relief guy. Occasionally doing something of worth but mostly acts paranoid and runs away from people in white sheets pretending to be poltergeists._

_He knows they don’t think about him like that, though. Not really. Vivi actually pulls him aside after she and Lewis start going out to make sure he’s okay with it_ (he says yes, even though it’s not that simple). _They both hang out with him separately, like they’ve always done – it’s more fun to trashtalk people from work or school with Lewis. And it’s more of a competition to play video games with Vivi, because truth be told Lewis isn’t that good at Assassin’s Creed._

_But something is wrong and he can’t put it into words because he doesn’t have the map for how it_ should _feel in his head. So he chalks it up to envy (for both of them), and feels horrible about it, because really all he wants is their happiness, and to be happy beside them._

_Then, there’s nothing to feel envious about, and things get so much worse._

* * *

 

_Beat_.

                She climbs in through the attic window, and there is a small purple cloud hovering on her bed, looking at the posters on the walls with great interest.

                She doesn’t scream. That would be entirely counter-productive and anyway, it doesn’t seem very threatening.

                She clears her throat. ‘All hail?’

                The cloud, which is just formless enough that she can question whether she is imagining the image of eyes in its nebulas, makes a squeaky sound, and darts under the bed.

                ‘No, it’s okay! You can come out. Uh, my name is Vivianne Sato, could you tell me what you’re doing in my room?’

                Hesitantly, the cloud squiggles out from under her bed _(she doesn’t think anyone would enjoy staying in the mess under there anyway)_ and she recognizes it as one of the strange poltergeists from the manor, but more faded and transparent.

                Just then, Mystery trots in through the door with a plate bearing a sandwich gripped carefully in his jaws. He takes one look at the purple cloud, then at Vivi, and sighs, much too exasperatedly for a normal dog.

                Of course, he isn’t. She knows that. They’re just past talking about it by now. After all, he communicates almost as well through raised eyebrows _(which dogs normally don’t have)_ and sardonic glances.

                He scares the little cloud well enough, because it whizzes under her bed again, and they have to coax it back to find out what is going on.

                It’s hard enough to communicate with something that only seems to express itself through renditions of David Bowie, but eventually she gets it.

                The – the Ghost hasn’t disappeared, like she suspected… or feared, when she saw the house go out of focus in the rear-view mirror. But, the cloud tells them with a thrilling cover of ‘Moonage Daydream,’ something is about to go wrong soon, and they have to do something about it.

                She suspects she added the ‘have to’ herself. Either way, she’s not about to back down from this.

                Mystery looks as if he’s going to cop out, but she grabs him by the scruff of the neck. ‘There are things that you haven’t been telling me when you really should, and you are going to do that _now_.’

                She doesn’t tell Arthur, because both of them promised, and you don’t steal your friend’s car unless you have a _really_ good reason, although this comes close. So she takes her blue vespa, and drives through the early night, the not-quite-a-dog reluctantly explaining the whole thing as he hangs onto the sidecar.

* * *

 

_Beat._

They sound like whispers, but in his mind, they feel like screams. He isn’t sure which ones are his own, anymore.

                _You couldn’t resist it, could you?_ Says the one he recognizes as green, and friendly, and sharp. _Not when they were so happy without you and you could have none of that happiness for yourself. Not all that surprising, frankly. He deserved to die._

_NO!_ He screams, still in the confines of the darkened bathroom. _I could never – I wouldn’t -!_

_But you_ did _,_ says the voice, smug but conciliatory. _Nothing for it, I suppose. Nothing you can do to make up for it. It’s too late_ now _._

_No… No…_

_Please._

There is a blessed silence in his head. Then:

                _I suppose there is one thing_ , says the voice, as if doubtful.

                He listens.

                Then, he crawls out, and puts on his shoes, and starts the van.

                It’ll be a long drive before he is done.

* * *

 

_Beat_.

                The manor is still there. Only more… harsh.

                The dandy-ish colors and angled lines loom in the absence of light. The candles are out, lit by no flame, purple or otherwise. Ahead of her floats the cloud, which has grown rather more substantial now than before.

                The place creeps her out, and she wishes it didn’t. It _shouldn’t_ , because she’s lived there in her head for almost a decade.

                Better do something about that, then.

                There is no-one else about, not even other cloud-like ghosts. Or… the other one. Still, she doesn’t call out, because she doesn’t know what scares her more: Being answered, or only receiving silence.

                She stands up straight, and sets a determined look on her brow. Right. ‘Show me,’ she says to the cloud. It mutters a few bars of Mumford and Sons, then glides along the corridor.

                The house is much easier to navigate when you aren’t being chased. And, she suspects, when its owner isn’t turning it against you.

                They walk the corridor for what seems an unreal amount of time – probably it doesn’t obey normal laws of time and space.

Then, there is a door.

Beyond that, a room.

And inside, the coffin.

                Lifting the lid is the hardest thing she has ever had to do. Or second-hardest. Briefly she thinks, _If we’d had nothing to bury, maybe this would be different. Maybe this would be easier._

                No turning back now.

                The admittedly dapper skeleton stares back at her, but there is no fire to make his eyes now. By his coat pocket rests the locket, shattered, blue.

                ‘Hello, Lewis.’

* * *

 

_Beat_.

                He stares at her. Then stares some more, because he thought he would never see her again, and realizes he’ll be alright if he can just have a moment longer on this plane, no longer alone. No, not ‘no longer alone.’ No longer without _her_.

                ‘Viv…’

                ‘We’ve got to stop meeting like this,’ she says. There’s a color in her cheeks and on her ears that suggests that she’s not that far from crying.

                ‘I –‘

                ‘I’m sorry I left before we could work it out,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I ran. You were trying to show me, weren’t you? But then Arthur got scared and we ran.’

                The fire flares in his eyes. ‘ _Him,’_ he says, in a voice that is not at all like the calm tone he used when he was alive. ‘I will _burn_ him!’

                ‘No, you won’t,’ she says firmly, and if he weren’t so furious he’s certain his heart would have shattered again.

                ‘Vivi, he _murdered me.’_

‘I know,’ she says. ‘But that’s not the whole story. I wasn’t asking the right questions before, but now I think I am. Someone’s been messing with us.’

                He’s so unused to talking that he doesn’t manage to ask her what she means verbally, but just makes a gesture with his head. He’s sure it doesn’t communicate the same when you don’t have a proper face. But she understands him, like she always has.

                She reaches for his hand, and he is very nearly shattered with the shock when he realizes she can touch him. He takes hers, because he doesn’t know how temporary this new development is and he’ll be damned if he lets the chance slip through his literal fingers.

                ‘You remember the hiker, don’t you? The one that lead us to the cave?’

                ‘Of course.’

                ‘Arthur doesn’t. No, he really doesn’t, you know he’s a horrible liar. And I thought I was lying to myself, telling myself he’d been there. Because there was no trace of him or his supposedly injured friend after you – after you.’ She swallows, and then forces the words out. ‘After you fell.’

                ‘But… how is that…’

                In the corner of his vision, he can see Blinky going nuts trying to catch his attention, and turns to him. _What is it?_ He thinks in their direction, because the Dead Beats are still better at communicating through thought than song lyrics.

                _The green light, boss! We tried to tell you, but you didn’t understand!_

_What do you mean?_

_We was there because of it! So was you! You know it wasn’t empty, the cave!_

He can feel himself start trembling at the idea that is sneaking up on his mind, but he says, ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

                Vivi clutches at his hands so hard that it would have hurt were he alive. ‘Mystery finally told me what happened. He saw it. That’s why he followed you. That’s why he bit Arthur’s arm off.’

                ‘Arthur lost his arm?!’ It’s really not what he should be focusing on right now. Whenever he tries to think about Arthur he feels the violet rage in the front of his brain, but the idea of him so badly hurt makes him want to… To…

                He doesn’t know _what_ it makes him feel, but there is a lot of it.

                ‘When you fell… Lewis, what happened to you after you died?’

                He doesn’t know how to explain. ‘When you’ve told me what happened,’ he says. ‘Then I can tell you.’

                She looks at him, her glasses perched on the tip of her nose like they tend to be when she’s tired. ‘Lewis… I don’t think it was really Arthur who killed you. I don’t think the Arthur we know ever would have. I think he was possessed.’

                It blindsides him so completely that when the next thought turns up, he’s on his knees on the floor, his hands on the marble tile. They are large, and have skin, and veins, and leave fingerprints on the imaginary stone. Without a doubt he knows that he is back to looking his horrifyingly only-just-dead self. But he can feel Vivi’s arms around him, for which he is so _grateful_.

                ‘…’ He says, because he’s spent a year _(he’s found out how long it’s been by now)_ hating his best friend and blaming him for his death. And if he doesn’t have that to drive him on, then what the hell is he going to do? What reason does he even have to exist anymore? Why not just fade… away..?

                He feels himself flicker, and grits his teeth, bringing his hand up to his chest, where the locket is still cracked but randomly changing color from blue to yellow. He just got her back, or got himself back to her, and perhaps… It’s possible for him to make things right with Arthur. Before he disappears.

                ‘It’s okay, big guy. I’ve got you.’ Vivi strokes his back, even though he knows for a fact that he has a hole the size of a saucer through his upper abdomen. She never was very squeamish.

                ‘I can remember the green light,’ he says dully. ‘And I kept asking myself why I could see it after I died, because everything else looked different. And while I was stuck in the cave I was always so angry… No, not stuck. It felt like something was trying to convince me to stay there. And the angrier I got the less I felt like myself.’ He looks up, and she doesn’t wince when she sees his blank eyes. ‘If that is what it felt like just to be near that… whatever it was… what must it have been like for Arthur to have it inside his mind?’

                She embraces him tightly. ‘Oh, honey. You always were too concerned for everyone but yourself.’

                ‘I guess it makes sense that is what killed me,’ he says, and it’s almost funny, so they laugh for something to feel but grief.

                ‘Do you think he’ll talk to me?’ He asks after a while. ‘Just. Just so we can clear things up. If he doesn’t remember pushing me, maybe it’s best not to tell him…’

                Vivi’s expression is complicated, and she goes to say something, but just then, her phone rings.

                ‘Sorry,’ she mutters, and he notices that he’s got blood all over her sweater when she pulls back to retrieve her phone. It’s not _actual_ blood, of course, just the memory.

                ‘Hello?’ There is silence on the other end of the line, but before she could glance at the caller ID, someone answers.

                ‘Yeah, hi.’

                ‘Arthur?’

                ‘Yeah – listen, I called to talk about something important, but I don’t have a lot of time.’ His voice is strangely flat, or even robotic, missing all the little nuances Vivi should recognize, but can’t find right now.

                ‘Arthur, I really need to meet you – right now, actually.’

                ‘Sorry, I don’t have the time, I’ve got to be somewhere in a moment.’

                She frowns, but the edge in his voice is creeping her out, even more than Lewis’ black, empty eyes and the torn image of his body. ‘What do you mean, it’s midnight. Arthur, what’s wrong?’

                ‘I figured it out, Viv,’ he says, entirely too casually. Because she knows Arthur, and he should be jittery by this time of night, and constantly apologizing because he called her so late. ‘I remember, now. I think it was because of what happened in that house, but I remember what happened.’

                Now, cold dread begins to blossom in her chest, and work its way down to her vital organs one inch at a time. ‘Arthur, it’s not like what you think-‘

                ‘No, it is.’ He pauses. ‘I killed Lewis, Vivianne. I’m so, so sorry.’ And finally he sounds almost like himself, his voice cracking. ‘I didn’t mean to – but it wasn’t an accident. I. I thought I was envious. But I wasn’t, I just thought that’s what it had to be because I was so confused after you guys got together, and I’m sorry I wasn’t completely honest when you asked me if it was okay. If I’d figured it out all this might not have happened and Lewis might not be dead and –‘ There is a heavy silence on the other end of the line, but it has texture, because a person making every effort not to cry still isn’t really silent.

                ‘No! Arthur, it’s, it’s okay, just come over and we’ll talk, we can fix this!’

                ‘I thought about that,’ he said. ‘And I can’t. I messed up big-time, Viv. I’m sorry.’

                ‘… Arthur, where are you?’

                ‘I’m almost there. I figure if I can’t fix it, at least I can make us even.’

                ‘Arthur –‘

                ‘Goodbye, Vivianne.’

                The phone goes silent. She stares at it. Then at Lewis, who has been silent this entire time, but as if he were listening to something – the cloud that brought her to the manor. ‘He’s. He’ll…’

                He is wearing the guise of a scary specter again, but it’s oddly comforting, because as his flaming eyes look into the distance, she can see he’s figured something out. ‘He is going back to the cave,’ he says.

                ‘Yes.’

                ‘We have to stop him.’

                ‘How? It’s too far away, we’ll never get there in time!’ She feels sick, like she hasn’t since she saw him fall and later when they lowered the coffin into the ground.

                He’s quiet, like he always is when he’s thinking hard about something, and it briefly amazes her how little he has changed in a year, a year of not being alive. The he says, ‘I’m not sure if this will work, but it’s the only thing I’ve got. It might go wrong, but we both need to go get him. It won’t work if it’s just one of us.’ He holds out his hand, and violet fire streaks down his arm. ‘Do you trust me?’

                She lost him once, although she’s gotten him back, and she’ll be damned if she’ll let the same thing happen to Arthur.

‘Of course.’

She takes his hand.

The fire goes out in his eyes - she imagines that he closes them. Then

they

are

falling

* * *

 

_Beat_.

It’s gone completely dark hours ago, and he doesn’t have a flashlight to light his way when he leaves the van. It doesn’t matter. He can see the trail in his head as clearly as he could in the daylight a year ago.

                _Just a few steps more,_ says the emerald voice consolingly. _And then it’ll all be over._

He nods, even if there’s no-one to see him. Vivi’s cracked voice has been playing on a loop in his head since he hung up the phone. But he can’t fix this any other way _(if he wasn’t so disoriented, he’d notice that he can’t distinguish between his own voice and the other just then.)_

If he could go back…

                He walks into the cave, even if he can’t see where he’s going. Would it matter?

                The green light is just enough to further define the darkness, and he thinks, _If I could go back?_

_If I had taken his hand – if he’d dared say something to either or both of them, anything at all. If I’d understood, if I’d had any idea how I was feeling, would it be different now?_

There are burning tears falling from his eyes now, but his chest moves normally as he breathes, much more regular than it ever did on any given day.

                At least he managed to say goodbye this time.

                He’s just about to reach the end of the cave, he knows. It wasn’t so much further than this that he. That he –

                ‘Arthur!’

                He spins on his heel so fast that he almost trips. There’s a change in the air behind him which means that the cavern has opened up and that ledge is behind him, but that barely registers because _Vivi_ is there. And he’s so surprised that he just dumbly says ‘How did you get here?’

                She’s disheveled, and breathing heavily, and her expression is furiously open, and she says, ‘Arthur, you have to listen to me! It wasn’t your fault!’

                He half-laughs. ‘Wha – don’t be silly, Viv. I was there, I pushed him. I remember it.’ It’s the second time he says it out loud, and again it’s easier to admit to everyone but himself. He still hasn’t stopped crying.

                ‘But it wasn’t _you_ , Arthur! I know you. You would never have done that! Why would you?’

                ‘I – I was… envious?’ He can feel this stark certainty slipping and the glare of green against his eyeballs, but he can’t stop looking at her, because it may be the last time.

                ‘You weren’t! Arthur, just talk to me, and I will help.’ She says that last bit like a prayer, and he knows, because he and Lewis had gone with her to a Buddhist temple in the city a few times. It hurts, the tone and the memory both.

                ‘I –‘ He says, and suddenly his brain is _on fire_ , or at least that’s what it feels like, because the green voice screams from his mouth, ‘ _No! You are not spoiling my effort, not this time! The other one got away, but this one will be broken and drained of everything that makes him human! This time, I will succeed!’_

Vivi has gone utterly white, but the look on her face is firm. What’s left of Arthur’s consciousness remembers the other times she had that expression on and knows she is going to get her way no matter what. She grits her teeth. ‘So I was right.’

                And now he can feel his arm rising by some other influence – the physical flesh one, the one that didn’t kill Lewis, and it prods him in the chest when his mouth, but not his voice says. _‘Oh, little girl. Do you have any idea how easy it is to foster doubt in a mind like this one, that believes it holds no inherent value?’_ His mouth contorts in a grin that doesn’t fit his face and the hand reaches out. _‘Why, would you like to know how easy it was for me to get him to reach out and_ push _?_

Vivianne flinches. ‘Leave him now, or there will be consequences.’

                _‘Oh, what are_ you _going to do? You were unable to do anything when your friend here made your boyfriend fall to his death – what could you possibly do against a spirit?’_ The voice jeers, and Arthur wants to scream at it to _shut up_ and _leave her alone_ but he can‘t, he can‘t move his own body.

                ‘Oh, it’s not me you have to worry about right now,’ she says, her face as grim as an acre of graveyards.

                That’s when the ghost holding his body twists to look behind him. And it sees a face much more grim by default rising over the ledge as the revenant from the manor settles on the stone floor and its eyes catch fire yet again.

                The gnarled light inside him recoils, but says in a mocking voice, _‘You? And here I thought you’d finally dissolved? Come to take your revenge at last, Ghost?’_

And Arthur finds himself thinking, _please, if that’s what it takes to get it out, to make sure it doesn’t hurt anyone ever again –_ Because in his mind he now can see the fractured memories of every spirit his possessor has devoured through the years. And all for such a simple reason as that if it did, it might last just a little bit longer in this world. It has poisoned so many minds – everyone from the young woman who came here alone only a decade ago with a bottle of tequila after the death of her mother, and the man who happened past after a ruinous war, and the old Navajo woman who was the only one to arrive this far, the rest of her family lost behind as their own lands were unjustly taken from them.

                Maybe if Lewis gets Arthur, he’ll get _It_ as well.

                The ghastly specter that he knows in his heart to be his best friend burns bright violet, which cancels out the eerie green light of the cave. And Arthur wants to wince, yell, do something, because the remnants of his arm where it connects to his prosthesis _hurts,_ but also because he wants to say all the things he never got the chance to before.

                He can feel the green voice put a frown on Arthur’s own face when he realizes what he’s thinking, and it shrugs his shoulders. _‘Well. Seems your ‘friend’ isn’t happy that I’m going to destroy you – isn’t that funny? I haven’t had a body so long… usually they just give out. It’s not like I can be bothered to have them eat.’_ The Thing moves to gesture Arthur’s arm in Lewis’ direction. _‘Let’s get on with it.’_

Arthur’s other hand _(the one that pushed Lewis, only not, because that hand is gone for good and this one is made of stainless steel and electrodes and in a way it belongs to him more than any other part of his body)_ darts out and wrenches the other down.

                _‘What?_ ’ The specter isn’t confused for long. _‘You useless sack of flesh! You try to disobey me_ now _?’_ But he manages to steal back his own mouth long enough to grind out: ‘Lewis, Viv – Please. Go. Before -’ Because he can feel, now, that a body isn’t made to withstand the occupation of a malevolent soul, and he doesn’t want to subject either of them to that once the ghost tires of him.

                The prosthesis creaks against the strain of a specter much more in control of his body than Arthur ever was. The pain before seems barely noticeable in comparison to now, but he welcomes it, because it keeps his mind clear of the voice and he can think like _himself_ for the first time in more than a day.

                And he notices that not only is the revenant-that-used-to-be-Lewis motionless, and although he doesn’t have a face to indicate what he may be thinking, you don’t spend the better part of your life around someone without picking up a few things.

                Lewis is angry, sure, but that seems merely a backdrop for something more complicated and regretful and solemn and tense. His eyes are dark, but then they light up again and he reaches out his own hand. The words _I hope you will understand_ , appear in his mind with the shock of freezing water, and he knows neither he nor the ghost thought it.

                The hand opens, and there’s a flash of something golden and blue and metallic.

                Then Vivianne barrels into his back and he staggers forward, the ghost shouting in anger, but Arthur manages to bring his steel arm up to where hers wrap around him. Just before he knocks into Lewis and they all tumble over the ledge, he catches sight of something of swirling colors out of the corner of his eye. Around him, the green light of the cave flares, then –

* * *

 

_Beat._

_A thousand, million images in his head –_

_The first meeting at the playground, the not-so-haunted house that smells of mothballs and other people’s attics;_

_their tables in middle school, scarred with graffiti, notes passed when the teacher isn’t looking;_

_Professor Velma’s face when black becomes blue and brown becomes violet – a brief look of approval because yellow stays the same but not for long because she’s about to call him out again for having bad handwriting;_

_a fake ghost is trying to convince him now would be a good time to run but he’s only got a sheet over his head and there’s a moon-and-stars pattern on it and somewhere in the background Mystery is laughing;_

_finally beating Vivi in Mario Cart and ducking when she tries to give him a noogie;_

_blood in his mouth - a split lip from punching a quarterback who called Lewis a queer and his face hurts like hell but it feels like victory because Vivi was right behind him and probably twisted her ankle kicking the guy in the balls and Lewis is smiling;_

_after-midnight take-out over b-movies and excessive philosophizing about the place of humanity in the universe;_

_seeing them kiss for the first time and it’s the bestworst day of the year and he doesn’t know why;_

_so close, so close, but not reaching out;_

_violet, yellow, blue;_

_a laugh;_

_a smile;_

_a fall._

* * *

 

Beat.

_The world is dark around him, but he doesn’t feel like he’s still falling, amazingly enough. But it is an oppressive darkness, although it’s a welcome change from the green light._

_The weight of everything that has happened, everything that he has done, crashes down on him, and in the darkness he sinks to his knees. If only he’d said something, if only he hadn’t been afraid to think about it at all, then he wouldn’t have been vulnerable to the coaxing voice, and wouldn’t even have considered killing Lewis. He hadn’t wanted to – not really. He knows that more than he knows anything else. It’s like when you happen to be standing at the edge of a cliff and something in you whispers at you to_ jump, jump _, even if you never would. But then something goes wrong, and you do, only it wasn’t him that fell._

_‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry.’_

_The darkness is silent._

_Then someone lays an arm over his shoulders, and he jumps, but looks up into Viv’s face, which somehow shows up against the shadows in brilliant and warm blues. ‘I know,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry, too.’_

_He almost laughs. ‘What do_ you _have to be sorry for?’_

_‘For not realizing you had forgotten. For not asking again, when I asked you whether it was all okay.’ She looks down, and as they would in real life, her glasses slip down her nose in a way he has always been helpless to find adorable. ‘None of us spoke about it, and we all should have, so we are all equally guilty.’ This place feels like a dream, even if the words sound real, but if that means they can say what they want without consequence, then maybe he’ll try to listen._

_He jumps again when another hand touches his shoulder. It’s Lewis, and he looks just as terrible as when they carelessly carried him to the ambulance, because you don’t have to worry about the comfort of someone who is already dead. But even though his eyes are black, they’re still him in a way that is achingly familiar. He tries to say something, and his hand tightens on Arthur’s shoulder._

_Then a mocking voice fills the not-space, and lines of green slither through the darkness. ‘Oh,_ please _. Am I missing something here? He literally_ killed _you, and you’re willing to let it slide? And you, girly? You can’t have loved that boyfriend of yours all that much if that doesn’t bother you.’_

_The words fee like they’ll crush him all over again, but Vivi takes his hand and looks into his eyes. ‘We have a lot to work through, but whatever that thing is,’ she gives the main focus of emerald the stink-eye, ‘It’s none of its business how we deal with it.’_

_He looks up at Lewis, who just nods, and he thinks of all the things he missed out on and it strikes him that he really, really wants to kiss both of them._

_But there is something very final about a kiss, so he holds out his hand instead._

_Lewis takes it._

_Around them, the darkness cracks, but not with green. Instead, blues and yellows and violets spiral through the shadows and banish the envious light, and the final remnants of a snide and mocking voice shrivel into nothing, and then is gone, and so is consciousness._

* * *

 

_Beat._

He can feel the cold stone floor beneath him, but even without recalling whether they fell with prejudice or not, he feels no pain, even where his old arm meets steel.

A warm hand on his brow makes his eyelids flicker.

‘Just sleep, Arthur. For now.’

He does.


	3. What comes after

He wakes again, in what he can instantly feel to be his own, only-just-double bed, and before the memories resurface, he can almost pretend that everything that happened was a dream. It’s dark still, but it’s the just the normal kind of dark you get in a basement at five in the morning.

                Also, he’s sandwiched between his two most important people in the world, which is something he’d never thought would happen. Even if one of them hadn’t been dead to the world for the last year.

                Nevertheless, it’s probably in his top-ten list of best wake-ups. Although it doesn’t exactly lend itself to keeping his usual low-level anxiety from going through the roof.

                But he’s also hungry.

                He somehow manages to get up without waking either of them, although the bed frankly isn’t big enough for two normal-sized people _and_ Lewis. Even if he wasn’t back to being a dapper (but currently not flaming) skeleton.

                His fridge is almost completely empty. At least the ghost wasn’t lying when it said feeding its hosts wasn’t a priority. He stares blearily into the washed-out glare, blinking away afterimages as he didn’t bother to turn on the kitchen light, and tries to think over the stuttering heartbeat in his chest.

                Then he very nearly has a stroke, because there is a skeleton in a suit hovering in the doorway, and that’s not something anyone needs first thing in the morning.

                ‘Jesus _Christ_ Lewis, could you _try_ not to be this creepy? You almost killed me – oh god, that’s a terrible thing to say I’m so sorry –‘ He collapses into a kitchen chair, and huffs when Lewis floats, not walks, over to a second one. There have always been three chairs, and there still are. He didn’t have the heart to throw the third one out, even the days it felt as if it was staring at him accusingly because no-one would ever sit in it again.

                He runs a hand over his face. ‘We’re a mess, aren’t we.’ Lewis only inclines his head.

                ‘So, you’ve really got that whole ‘mysterious spirit’ thing going for you, but are you going to say anything? Only it’s cool if you don’t because I don’t really deserve anything from you, I mean I pushed you off a cliff and fuck I’m bringing it up again what’s wrong with me-‘

                Lewis’ shoulders move as he begins to speak. ‘Sorry. I just didn’t know what to say.’

                ‘Oh.’ He stops babbling, because suddenly he doesn’t either.

                Then he asks, ‘So. What happened to that… That thing? And. How come you’re a ghost but really not?’

                Lewis goes very silent as he thinks, and his skeletal face distantly reminds Lewis of the Sugar Skull decorations from when Lewis invited them to his family’s Day of the Dead celebration. He wonders if there’s any correlation.

                ‘I think there was so little left of it that it’s really gone now. When it killed me, it meant to devour my memories to keep itself going, like it had done with the other people it killed. When it failed to do so it got desperate and managed to possess you again, because it never really let go of you. I think it was hoping to kill you, too.’

                Arthur tries to breathe normally. ‘And, and how come it didn’t manage to devour you?’

                Lewis is quiet for a long time. ‘I spent a whole year being furious at you,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t feel as long as that, though. Maybe when you don’t have a body you sense time differently. But that’s a long time, still, to be angry. I think that kept it away for a while, but then I wouldn’t stop remembering. And it kept me from becoming just an eco of a real person.’

                Arthur doesn’t know if you can die of guilt, but his brain has been making a thrilling effort for the last year, and it might just take a last sprint chance now.

                ‘Then I found out that it wasn’t you who killed me-‘

                ‘But I did!’ Arthur bursts out. ‘I did. I did, I did, I did. Lewis. I was there. I’m missing a hand as proof, look!’ He gestures at his metal arm, which is aching because normally he doesn’t wear it while sleeping. But Lewis takes his hand, and turns it over in his own, very corporeal hands, which begs several questions Arthur’s too preoccupied to think about now.

                ‘You made it yourself, didn’t you?’ He asks. Arthur just nods, but can’t meet his eyes.

                Lewis doesn’t let go. ‘It wasn’t you who killed me, Arthur. I think that’s why I was so angry. Because I didn’t really believe you ever would. Every memory I had of you didn’t fit with that picture. But. I still have some stuff to work out. So I don’t forgive you. Because it wasn’t your fault, and you don’t need forgiving. I’m sorry I hated you for something you didn’t do.’

                Arthur realizes he’s hyperventilating, but that’s not all that surprising in the circumstances. ‘You jackass. If this means you’ll, disappear in a shower of light or something because you’re ‘at peace’ I’m going to your grave to shout at you so loud you’ll hear me - wherever it is you’ll end up!’

                ‘I wondered about that, actually,’ said Lewis. He still hasn’t let go of Arthur’s hand. ‘I thought the longer a ghost was about the weaker they got. Turns out it just takes a bit of practice. A _lot_ of practice.’

                That’s when Arthur looks up again, and Lewis, the old Lewis, is there. Not the flaming skeleton, not the horribly mutilated corpse. Lewis. Although his eyes are still black and fiery, but you can’t have everything, and would you believe that it suits him?

                ‘Lewis…’

                Lewis clutches his hand, and trembles. ‘Yeah. I know.’

                There’s a small sound from the doorway, and Vivi barrels into Lewis’ bulk like a freight train, although it barely causes him to jolt. She buries her face in his hair. ‘You better not be going anywhere,’ she mumbles. And Arthur remembers that she hasn’t cried since before the funeral. And he wants to hold her so they can break that fast together. But he sits still, because he’s gotten so used to not acting on anything he thinks.

                ‘I’ll try not to,’ he mutters back, his voice hoarse.

                ‘How come you’re so, so solid?’

                He shrugs. ‘Power of music?’

                Vivi lets this pass. Hopefully, they’ll have enough time to figure out this particular mystery later.

                She doesn’t seem about to let him go any time soon, and who can blame her, so Arthur stands up. ‘Well, um. I’m just gonna-‘

                ‘No.’ Says Vivi.

                Lewis holds his hand tighter. It comes down to the same thing.

                ‘Um. Okay.’

                He sits down again.

                Vivianne moves to her own chair, and says, quite seriously, ‘I think we need to talk about all,’ she gestures with the hand that isn’t holding Lewis’, ‘This.’

                ‘Um.’

                Lewis gives her a concerned look. She returns it, and says, ‘I know you thought it, too, back then. But we didn’t know what to do about it, so we did nothing. We messed up.’

                Lewis hesitates, then nods.

                Vivi turns to Arthur and asks, gently, ‘Art. How did that ghost get to you?’

                He feels his throat close up and his heart stops working properly. Welp. There it is. The oncoming consequence and rejection for something he hasn’t even admitted to yet. Oh, fuck. Well, he might as well go out honest.

                He tries to clear his throat, but only kinda succeeds. ‘It. I – When we were in the cave, it was just there, in my head. And. I was already in a crap mood because I had a bad feeling about the place. And, it started to point out all the stuff I’d been trying not to think about. And it said that I was envious of what you guys had. So I should get one of you out of the way.’ He’s breathing hard again, but Lewis hasn’t let go of his hand, and Vivianne reaches out for his other one. He doesn’t want to see the pity on their faces. ‘But it was wrong! I wasn’t jealous, I was happy for you. It’s just – I felt the way about you both the way you feel about each other, and I didn’t want to get in the way,’ he finishes in a rush.

                Well. He could have been more eloquent, but he can’t bring himself to properly say it. He isn’t even sure yet what this realization _(which has been gradually sneaking up on him for about three years now)_ means in relation to his sexual and/or romantic orientations. But he can worry about that later. He’s busy being terrified of how this will probably change his relationship with his two best friends for the worse.

                ‘Arthur,’ says Vivianne. ‘We know.’

                He looks up, and they’re looking back with patience and exasperation and not a single shred of condemnation. ‘Uh.’ He begins. ‘Then I completely fail to see why we’re having this hideously awkward conversation.’ Bury the nervousness, Arthur, bury it. You’re… well, not all that good at it, but at least you have practice.

                ‘Arthur,’ says Vivi patiently. ‘We feel the same way about you.’

                There’s a pause. Arthur’s expression doesn’t change, because there is literally no way any of this is happening. So maybe if he just ignores it he’ll stop having really psychedelic daydreams at inappropriate times.

                Vivi sighs, and gives Lewis a stern look indicating that he should at least try to be helpful. He looks as if he’s going to maybe make some sort of speech, but then just settles for, ‘We’re in love with you, Arthur.’

                He’ll stop imagining this whole thing any time now. _Any time now._

                Vivi rolls her eyes. ‘Oh, for god’s sake.’ Then she leans in and kisses him.

                And it feels familiar, and it really shouldn’t, because he’s never kissed her before. But it just feels as much like her as anything else they do – just like her hugs, and smiles, and words, and playful punches.

                He’s closed his eyes, which is good, because he’s pretty sure you’re supposed to do that _(he hasn’t exactly had a lot of practice)_ and although his heart doesn’t stop pounding, he feels so much calmer than he has for such a long time.

                Then she pulls away, and he opens his eyes again, and she’s smiling at him, widely, in a way she hasn’t smiled for a long time. And it feels like stunned bliss is going to brim out of his ears.

                Then he catches a glance of Lewis, who is watching them intensely in a way that’s totally foreign but extremely appealing, even with those black eyes.

                They watch each other for a long time, and Arthur feels like he’s made out of dozens of tightly wound springs. Very carefully, he rises from his seat, because the illusion might break and someone might yell ‘psych!’ and it would all be over. Their fingers are still tangled together, but he lays his other hand on Lewis’ shoulder.

                He’s aware of Vivi watching them with a half-smile on her face.

                Lewis’ gaze is full of odds and ends: Contentment, the remains of loneliness, want, frustration, the final residue of anger…

                Arthur leans in, hesitates for the final time, and kisses him.

                Maybe a kiss can also be a beginning, because this one is regret and forgiveness and ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘I didn’t know’ and consistent, old affection.

                It’s also really damn good, which he’s glad of, because at least the two of them know how this is supposed to go even if Arthur doesn’t. Although he doesn’t know about ‘supposed,’ because if any of this could easily be supposed it wouldn’t have taken him so freaking long to figure it out.

                He collapses into his chair _(again)_ which is good because you get a bit of a crick in the neck from leaning down like that, but also his knees had started out the morning as being made of jelly and have by now graduated to pretty much nonexistent. He can feel himself blushing.

                Vivi laughs a little, and when he glares at her laughs even harder. Lewis just smiles.

                ‘What now?’ He manages to say, trying to process that, wow, he’s just tripled the number of people he’s kissed in less than five minutes. And, double wow, he likes both of them more than he can really admit _and they like him back_.

                And his best friend is back from the grave, and his other best friend forgives him.

                Lewis’ face becomes serious.

                ‘Is it possible to get Chinese take-out at six in the morning?’

                In the end, they order in kebab. The delivery girl looks too tired to think further about the dazed guy with a metal arm who answers the door in his pajamas.

                It’s the best breakfast he’s had for more than a year.

                Afterwards, they go back to sleep. Because things are going to be okay, for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Make a drabble, she said.   
> It'll be fun, she said.  
> ...  
> Okay, so the drabble got a bit out of hand.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, yes. What's the best way to prepare for a test? Write a 15k fic about a 4 minute music video, of course. 
> 
> Ahahahahaha help me.


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